Quickies: Wookiees, Star Trek, Mars One, and Gandhi

The only female captain of “Star Trek” speaks out – “Mulgrew says the role of the Captain should be a timeless one, unmarried to imagined trends of the era. The Captain’s speech should be theatrical, she says, granting even hokey lines gravitas. Because of the part’s almost royal air, Mulgrew doesn’t think a female Captain would be played differently today than in the ’90s, even though tides have changed significantly in terms of women’s rights.”

Gandhi was a racist who forced young girls to sleep with him – “This is a colossal burden to place upon anyone—to dub him the greatest person to hail from a country that’s home to billions of people. Creating a false idol involves a great deal of forgetting. It’s easy to slobber over a man who didn’t really exist.”

Amanda

Amanda is a science grad student in Boston whose favorite pastimes are having friendly debates and running amok.

“In captivity, you want to make sure the habitat is right. Wookiees are clearly intelligent so you’d also want to give them some privacy. Chewbacca has a reputation for pulling people’s arms out of their sockets, and I imagine the females must be pretty formidable as well. You wouldn’t want to interrupt.”

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The Skepchick Network is a collection of smart and often sarcastic blogs focused on science and critical thinking. The original site is Skepchick.org, founded by Rebecca Watson in 2005 to discuss women’s issues from a skeptical standpoint.